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Seeing Ourselves Through Our Children’s Eyes

A friend of mine famously decided to go back to work when her young daughter announced one morning: “I go to school, Daddy goes to work. And Mommy goes to … gym.”

It can be eye-opening to see ourselves they way our children do. Delia Lloyd writes about this in a guest blog today. Consider it a counterpoint to last week’s discussion of seeing children through their parents’ eyes (or lenses…)

THE MANE EVENT: MOTHERHOOD REVISITED
By DELIA LLOYD

As someone who writes personal essays and blogs, I frequently use my family for material. I’ve written about my husband’s obsession with gadgetry, my son’s first exposure to sex ed and my daughter’s penchant for cross-dressing.

So I guess it was inevitable that sooner or later, the tables would be turned and I’d be the subject of something they wrote. Needless to say, this experience caught me off guard.

At the school my children attend in London, the head teacher solicits “half-term” projects from kids who want to do extra work. The kids write a report, she reads it and they get a certificate at assembly. It’s all good.

Each of my kids has jumped onboard enthusiastically with these assignments. My 8-year-old son has covered topics ranging from Tamerlane (his favorite Khan, as in Ghengis) … Team U.S.A. at the 2008 Olympics … and some of the more obscure “Star Wars” characters. (Plo Koon, anyone?)

My 5-year-old daughter’s reports have been a bit simpler: a reworking of the Cinderella narrative or a series of drawings with self-explanatory captions like “Pirate Louis Is a Pirate.”

Until now. A few days ago, my daughter declared that she’d like to do her half-term project on — wait for it — me. She asked me to download a few photographs from Picasa and then began to work in earnest.

An hour or so later, she produced a book titled: “Pictures of My Mummy.” The cover featured a drawing of a woman (presumably me) reclining in what I thought was a pair of sunglasses. These would-be spectacles were, I later learned, actually the eye patch I wear at night to shield light when I’m sleeping. (Thanks, darling. So glad my sleep disorders register in your iconic image of me.)

Inside, the book consisted of five random photographs: me, reading to her on a bus … our family, outside Versailles … a discarded head shot from my blog, etc. Each photo came with a line of semirelated text:

PAGE 1: My mummy enjoys teaching me to learn.

O.K., I thought. Nice start.

PAGE 2: My mummy is very good at cooking.

Patently false, but I’ll take the compliment.

PAGE 3: My mummy is always on time to school.

Really goes to my O.C.D. obsession with punctuality, but again, I’ll take the compliment.

PAGE 4: My mummy has a good memory.

And the kicker:

PAGE 5: My mummy is the mane [main] person in our family.

At first, I was flattered. I thought: Wow! How touching. My daughter really values and cherishes me. She wrote a whole book report just about me!

And then I was horrified. Because it was suddenly clear to me that my daughter’s entire sense of my identity hinged exclusively on my role as her mother.

It’s true that, these days, I am the “main” person in the family (albeit not the “mane” person as I’m virtually bald), if that means the person principally responsible for making lunches, doing school runs, arranging play dates, etc. But in the six and a half hours that my kids are at school every day, I’m also busily writing blog posts, pitching feature articles and trying to sell my novel.

And so I was sort of appalled that none of her sentences had anything to do with that.

I know, I know. Get over myself. Be happy that my daughter loves me so much. And I am.

But it’s hard. As someone who checks in with myself — oh, about every three hours or so — as to whether I’m doing the right thing with my life, I second-guess myself constantly. I wonder if, rather than trying to make it in an unconventional career as a writer-slash-blogger-slash-journalist-slash mom, I should just resume a more “legitimate” office job with, you know, a title and a business card and a door. (Most days, I’d settle for the door.)

Because then my daughter would envision me as something other than just her mother. And that would be better for her. And for me.

Or would it?

I recall an incident at my son’s preschool a few years back that still stings to this day. I was working full time. And because I left for work quite early in the morning, my husband did drop-off and our babysitter did pickup. But one day, I changed my schedule so that I could attend a Valentine’s Day breakfast. As I plopped myself down on the carpet, juice and doughnut in hand, a little girl who’d been eyeing me suspiciously came up and asked: “Who are you?”

“I’m Isaac’s mother,” I answered, laughing nervously, as if that were self-evident. But apparently, it wasn’t. And at that moment, a knife twisted inside me. Dear God, I thought. This is my son’s school, and no one even knows me. Who am I, indeed?

I know I’m not alone in experiencing these conflicting feelings of identity and motherhood. I have a friend who’s a (mostly) stay-at-home Mom and confided to me: “I don’t envy the other stay-at-home moms. I envy the ones who enjoy it.” I also got a lengthy voice mail from a friend who has gone back to work after being home for five years. “I feel like all I ever do is go to meetings anymore!” she sobbed into the phone.

But in my own case, there was something about seeing my daughter’s vision of me written down on paper — quasi-official, as it were — that made me recoil from something that normally would have made me quite proud. In all its precious detail, her little project forced me to re-examine – for the thousandth time – whether I’ve made the right professional choice for myself (and parenting choice for her). And in so doing, it crystallized both what I’ve both given up — and been rewarded with – in being the “mane” person in the family.

Which is, I suppose, a long way of saying that you just can’t win. And for now, at least, there’s nothing I can do about that ambivalence. Except, I suppose, to blog about it. …

About

We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more